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I remember when I first noticed the existence of patterns. Everywhere I looked, I discovered patterns. I did not immediately realise it, but I had discovered the concept of chaos theory. Initially, for a number of years, I never bothered to understand its principles, assuming that it was all about chaos – and I had a preconceived notion that the answer cannot lie in chaos, because that would mean randomness rules. That would have meant luck was the Master of the Universe, and I did not want to face that. Fortunately, I could not have been any more wrong.

Habits are patterns. Personalities are habituated behavioural patterns. Culture is patterns of behaviour and norms. Mathematics is all about formulae that describe specific patterns or rules. So is Biology. Every imaginable phenomenon that you can see or experience has an underlying rule or formula that determines the phenomenon or behaviour. All psychological ailments are simply defective patterning, and all counselling is an attempt to re-pattern. Ditto the athlete and the coach. The graduate on the fast-track and the drunk on the park bench. The geese flying in formation, the flock of seagulls fighting over a french fry. The peak hour traffic, the milling of a crowd at the sports stadium. The shape of snow flake, the coastline. The serial killer. The cereal floating in a bowl of milk. Patterns everywhere you’d care to look and a billion places you wouldn’t.

In order of importance, these are the four ideas or constructs that I have discovered over time, and that I consider indispensable. If I never study another self-help book or management text again, I will be able to fashion a solution to the most intractable problems form these four sources:

· The Word of God

Don’t worry, I am not a religious nut, and the insights and content contained in this book are not particularly concerned with the Bible. As a book it is well-known enough, so there isn’t anything I can add to make it more understandable. I won’t seek to justify its philosophies or accuracy. For what it is worth, I simply cannot accept that I am nothing more than a glorified fish walking on my hind legs. ‘Tis crude, but it is really as simple as that.

· Chaos Theory

More and more books are beginning to appear on this topic, and the only reason why it is not yet widely embraced by the public is because the language and constructs are often somewhat obtuse – written by scientists. That is slowly changing, because everybody has heard the quote about the butterfly flapping its wings…

· System Thinking

Thank God for Stafford Beer and the School of Cybernetics. Trust me when I say that a ‘system’ is not a machine, and the concept is worthy of your study.

· The 7-S Framework (Peters & Waterman)

In Search of Excellence was the book that kicked of the cycle (or should I say explosion?) of text books on the topics of interested to management and leadership. Suffice to say that I have been able to retro-fit most seemingly original ideas into that framework. (Tom seems to have become a bit of a crusader, now pronouncing aphorisms as the next big insight, but his life work is probably done.)

I promised upfront not to blog unless there was something to say – so I had a quiet week. Until I read http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/04/the_big_dip_ten.html – Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

I have contrarian views – most of the time, but usually agree with Guy on almost everything. Until now. In my view, the essential question (when do you quit?) is a very important one. It is hard to distinguish the difference between focus & discipline, and being smart enough to adapt and change or innovate.

The difference between success and failure are tallied in the decisions you have made. Only with hindsight do you know if a decision was right or wrong – and that is why so many people believe in ‘luck’. Sometimes ’sticking to a decision’ gets the right outcome – much like a broken clock is 100% right at least twice a day. Sometimes you have to ‘desert a sinking ship’ or ’stop throwing good money after bad’.

In this case, the question has been answered by a statement that begets even more questions: When you have suffered enough? When is the pain the greatest and how do you know that pain won’t get more (or less) soonish? Seth is fishing at the shallow end of the ‘achievement’ pool… and we are none the wiser. I believe there is an answer, but it ain’t Seth’s little aphorisms.

A rhetorical question today: Do you also wonder (sometimes) if we are truly able to make our own life (successes and failures) or whether it has been pre-determined by God?

The age-old debate of predeterminism:
God must know everything – or else He is not omniscient.
If God knows everything, then my decision is already made.
Is life worth living if my success or failure is not as a result of my labour and initiative and creativity?

The answer lies in what the image to the right represents. It is an image of Pollock’s paintings (“Convergence: Number 10, 1952″ at The Albright-Knox Gallery). It is a fractal image. Just Google ‘fractal pattern’) and you will see tens of thousands examples.
Fractal image is an image of chaos. It illustrates one of the tenets chaos theory very clearly: At the level of the whole it appears chaotic; random swirls and lines. Look closer and you will see fine repeating patterns.

And Life is like that: For the individual in his or her own ’sworl’ (swirl+ world = sworl, do you like it?) life appears to be pretty random. Shit happens. Sometimes it looks like thing go according to a plan, but then suddenly luck, fate or destiny seems to interfere and it is off on another tangent.

More people probably believe luck writes your success rather than choice. But the answer lies in the ’sworl’ – there is pattern. The pattern is set by a very simple set of rules (see the ‘Game of Life’ reference in an earlier blog) – and life plays out in that pattern. When you are bouncing around in your sworl – making decisions that take you left, right, forward, sideways or wherever, that is all as a result of those decisions. God does not take that decision for you. But where your life bounces to as a result of that decision has been pre-determined.

On a micro level you have complete freedom to make the decisions and get suffer the consequences (good or bad). But ultimately the pattern of Life is written in the universal law of God.

The new-age gurus are very fond of claiming they have discovered ‘the answer’ and know the ‘laws’ which can be reduced to a 7-step program of course, or in teh case of The Secret, only 1 – but generally I am quite doubtful. But whether the answer is discovered or not is not material. Because chaos theory also dictates that ‘everything is connected’ and that the system is sensitive to initial conditions, it will be humanly impossible – EVER – to manage the system entirely in your favour. Shit still happens, because somewhere in your sworl, someone makes a decision that is their butterfly flapping its wings, but turns out to be the tornado in your backyard. To wit: the drunk who skipped the red traffic light…

And so life swirls on-and-on in patterns that people just can never fully understand.

I am referring to the mind — and how it works.

It is really no different to any other body part in its basic composition (molecules à atoms à protons, neutrons and electrons) yet it is the seat of all our angst and all our joy.

The one thing in particular, of the many things that boggles my little mind, is its inability to react to reprimand and to negative stimuli. It is almost as if it doesn’t have a ‘reverse’ gear. I notice it particularly in other people and not always in myself. (Too close to home?)

Whenever you say to someone:

• ‘Don’t drop the glass’ – it invariably gets dropped.
• ‘Be careful not to fall over’ – results in falling over.
• ‘Don’t hit the ball in the net’ – sees the ball hitting the net.

Start the day by spilling coffee on your tie, and you berate yourself and warn yourself that this is going to be ‘one of those days’ – and tell me I am wrong, but it usually turns out to be one of those days!

If you think Quantum Physics is the beginning of understanding the way the Universe functions (as I do) then you will also appreciate that Chaos Theory is predicated on the understanding that the universe is one: everything is connected. (No Deepak Chopra, no new-age crap – pure science).

You may not have thought it about this way, but that means that your thoughts… are connected to the glass that was dropped! WOW. (This thought should percolate a while…)

The mind does not process the ‘negative’ qualifier – don’t – it simply understands ‘drop the glass’.

I have no idea why… and I can’t find any research (what is the matter with Google?) to back this up. Maybe you know?

Margaret Wheatley asked this question: Who are you?
http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/eightfearlessquestions.html

The question is not new – in fact it is probably the original question (or maybe even the primordial) question. But her take on the response is interesting: Your answer should be ‘big’ enough to hold your life.

Do you define yourself as a cancer survivor? A father? A marketer? Are any of these answers ‘big’ enough to hold your whole life?

Suddenly we start needing multiple lables – and maybe that is a cop out? What is the ‘lable’ that will define who you really are?

And here is my little insight: Those who can define who they are most clearly and soonest, are the ones who become who they think they are best, and hence are the most successful? It is the philosophical equivalent of a USP or a brand proposition, or maybe even the sales equivalent of your 30 sec elevator pitch.

You don’t only need it – but you need to live it. That is when the belief will manifest itself in your life.

Who are you?